Amanda Kleintop and Cora Wigger

Amanda Kleintop, assistant professor of history, and Cora Wigger, assistant professor of economics, are the 2025-2027 CEL Scholar (joint appointment). Together, they will focus on advancing data literacy in engaged learning and developing interdisciplinary resources to help faculty and students critically analyze and apply data across fields.

Students in a classroom or library, engaged with papers and laptops, representing active historical research. Overlaid text reads: 'Students got a taste of what it was like to be a historian by reading sources out of context, and they also arrived to class prepared for discussion.'

Historical Literacy as Data Literacy: An Intro to SOCC Analysis 

As a Civil War historian, I know the power of sharing primary sources with students to understand causality and intentionality in the past. For example, the former Chief Historian of the National Park Service has argued that few can read Confederate states’ declarations of…

"As concepts become more abstract, reaching agreement on appropriate measurement strategies becomes more difficult." -Cora Wigger

Defining and Measuring 

This semester, I’ve been working with two wonderful students doing mentored research projects of their own design. As they’ve been developing their research questions, I am reminded fondly of an exercise I did in a research methods class during grad school.   The professor, Dr. Ellen Goldring,…

"Instead of separating AI literacy and data literacy, we see data literacy as a key precursor to AI literacy." -Cora Wigger

Data Literacy as a Precursor to AI Literacy 

As the new school year begins and our weeks are filled with slide edits, planning meetings, and the smell of new notebooks, one theme is dominating the preparation: Artificial Intelligence. I am not an AI expert. I have no tips…

"There were a host of lessons to be learned about what it means to engage in equitable and engaged teaching of data literacy." -Amanda Kleintop & Cora Wigger

Engaging Students in Transcribing Historical Data: About the Project 

In this post and a series of student contributions that follow, we describe a summer project where we engaged with students doing transcription work of historical archival documents. While the original conception of the project started off as purely oriented…

Two field researchers reviewing data with quote: "Our definition and framework start with the existence of data itself—the ability to identify data as data.”

Defining Data and Data Literacy, Step 1 

When I, along with my CEL Scholar colleague Dr. Cora Wigger, describe our CEL project about data literacy and data justice to colleagues, we’re confronted with the same problem: every academic in every discipline defines “data” differently. As a historian…